I have no idea what this book is about. FWIW, here's the Quill & Quire profile. And here's a review from CM magazine. Whoopsie! I see the issue: the book "presents events from the Palestinian perspective."

From the article: "As one student said, "It made me stop and see there might be more sides than just one." Maybe there are three sides - one for each side and then one for the truth that no one can see. "

Sort of interesting that she lived in a kibbutz and stayed with Palestinian families when she was researching the book.

While the "Red Maple" list is certainly nothing that a right-wing propogandist would recommend, ie) "Lunch with Lenin" helping us "understand" the complexities of the drug world - from farmers who "rely" on the opium trade and kids who by marijuana for their arthritic grandmother (wink).. book burning is book burning.

Better response:

Request age-appropriate reading that you believe provides a balanced perspective.

Oh.. and BCL.. I'm assuming you AGREE that Ann Coulter should have been allowed to spew her babble at U of O?

She was allowed. As far as I'm concerned, her organizers bunged up royally by securing room too small for the crowd that showed up, and then blamed the protesters. This is based on any number of accounts from people at the event, including reporters, some Coulter sympathizers, and police.

I'm wondering if the same school is exposing students to the Danish cartoons.

I think that's the issue here, including with Coulter.

Netanyahu at Concordia? Riot.

Coulter at U of O? A ridiculous criminal hate speech warning in advance of her visit and then possibly acts and omissions which prevented her from speaking.

A Holocaust "revisionist" and 9/11 kook at Vancuver Public Library as part of "Reedom to Read" week? No problem (and no riot).

Israel Apartheid Week? No biggie (and no rioting).

Uncomfotrable as it may be, there is a troubling pattern. Yes, Coulter may have done her part to make it look like she was effectively shut down (which she denies), but the reason she can do do with some plausible cover is that the pattern is undeniable.

Free speech isn’t a left/right issue. If you look through all the posts on this over the past few days, there is pretty much an overwhelming consensus here that indeed she should be allowed to spew her racist, anti-Canada diatribes. Denying it only makes her a free-speech martyr – which is pretty much what Ezra was planning here all along with this UofO stunt. Frankly, I think her lecture should have been broadcast over the CBC/CTV news channels live. A Q&A session would be nice too, with an explanation on her past comments about how Canada is ‘lucky’ to be allowed its existence on this continent.

I also took note of how she hopes how everything west of Calgary is saved from the ‘loony liberals’ out east. We old school Red Tories really enjoy being called socialists by populist, neo-liberal racist windbags.

The email ("ridiculous hate speech warning") was a private missive to her from Houle. Unless you think Houle leaked it himself, who do you think bears responsibility for it winding up in the NP? I can give you a hint, if you like.

The Netanyahu thing is from a bit before the time when I cared about stuff like this, so I can't really comment on that.

The Israeli apartheid thing attracted condemnation provincially and of course an attempt was made federally. A much bigger deal than a private email advising a speaker as to the state of hate speech laws in Canada. The fact that there weren't riots this year (and aren't most years) is probably due to the fact that there is no significant Mid-East conflict going on this year. The 9/11 kook I know nothing about.

I think there is a death struggle going on in terms of how we discuss the ME here. There is intimidation on both sides with the nature of the intimidation being different----but intimidation it is on both sides.

I don't generally agree with what BB does on the ME but the list in question is one of "recommended" books and I'm not clear on why an instrument of the state in fact should be recommending what sounds like a one sided account of a foreign conflict. If the recommendations include countervailing views then I still question why any of these texts are being suggested, but then at least it's not one sided.

But overall let's be clear--opponents of Israel want though BDS to brand Israel as an illegitimate enterperise, from the film festival to IAW to good sold at Mountain Equipment Coop to really anything you can think about. And BB and others want to brand that very effort as anti-Semitic.

I agree with the leak aspect of the Houle letter but there isn't a shred of a plausible argument that what Coulter says is criminal hate speech in Canada. She would never e charged and if charged the charge would be thrown out in a nanosecond.

So my question is: why does Coulter get that letter in advance of an appearance and do other conrtoversial events that create discomfort--such as Israel Apartheid Week-receive like letters from academic administrators?

I think we all know the answer to that question and that's the issue for me.

Actually, I'm not sure we DO know the answer to that question. Others might have recieved similar letters and simply not leaked them to the media. In any case, the odds of Michael Moore (for example) actually saying anything that resembles hate speech are far lower than in the case of AC.

Also, assume a work context. You are Jewish and the boss starts babbling about your perfectability. Or you are Muslim and the boss starts babbling about taking a camel. That MIGHT rate an HRC complaint, no?

I don't see anyone threatening to vilify and defame me for speaking out about the lack of human rights, democracy, economic and social justice or the establishment of religious theocracy in the Middle-East, MM.

In fact, there's no dearth of that in our mainstream media. Ask anyone who has an informed opinion about the region; I'm sure they're aware of all the issues. Some just become a different priority at times (like when the US and its allies are occupying two countries in the region, actions by which hundreds of thousands of people are being injured and killed.

he and Mother Teresa Coulter should partner up and take their act on the road. If they sold souvenir fridge magnets they'd probably make enough to pay for a vacation at a walled-in community somewhere in the Tropics during malaria season.

BCL.. as you say, there has been a refreshing sense of unity, to some extend, from those on each side of the spectrum who might be described as less than extreme..

And, as I blogged, cudos to the Association of University Teachers for calling out the school for sort of trying to pre-empt Coulter's babble.

In an interestin way, however, people like Ann Coulter and Ralph Galloway do us a favor, because they force us to examine our position from a rational as opposed to a ideological perspective.

I can't very well support keeping Ralph Galloway out of the country but argue in favor of Anne Coulter or George Bush coming to Calgary.. and vice versa.

..and the suggestions from the B'Nai Brith, as happens with some regularity, overstate the case - but remind us, as parents, of our obligation to inquire as to what our children read and then take the responsibility to discuss with them what they get out of it.

Easy to just attack a school and tell them to burn some books. Being an involved parent takes some effort.

Greg Felton spoke at the VPL within the last couple of years. U of O isn't responsible for the VPL and vice versa but the contrast is notable.

Maybe to a hyper-attentive paranoiac with no sense of perspective. How do you even manage to remember stuff like this? The whole wave of anti-francophone rhetoric that popped up during the period leading to the last referendum is just a blur to me now.

Anyway, libraries collect all kinds of objectionable material. It really is the last place anyone should think of protesting based on sensibilities, political or otherwise. You won't get a group of more highly-educated, more informed and stauncher opponents of censorship than librarians when it comes to documented information.

I've never heard of Greg Felton. Judging from his web site, he looks like a standard leftist activist to me, although that standard has been shifted decidedly in the last decade from mainstream to extreme at least in the minds of right wingers and "Eustonian liberals."

And as for Felton, spend a bit more time there before you come out with something so wildly false. He thinks Jews are Khazars and don't descend from Biblical Jews, thinks the Hoiocaust is a myth and that "Zionists" collaborated with the Nazis to make sure it occurred.

And the issue isn't that a libray stocked his book but that he received a platform for Freedom to Read Week when you know there wouldn't be the same thing done for, say, the cartoons.

And as for Felton, spend a bit more time there before you come out with something so wildly false. He thinks Jews are Khazars and don't descend from Biblical Jews, thinks the Hoiocaust is a myth and that "Zionists" collaborated with the Nazis to make sure it occurred.

Sources? Not that doubt you necessarily, because I have heard those things from other antisemites in sheep's clothing before, but like I said, I don't know who this guy is.

In any case, it's seems like a distraction from the matter at hand, but then again, that's what you're good at.

I'm not wasting my time linking to his columns which will serve only to bring him mere.

Your central point is nothing more than "you're right but I discount you're being right" because it's inconvenient and doesn't fit my preconceived notions.". Either that or a Napleonic complex. Either way it led you to side with the loonish and anti-Semitic arthurdecco for years so you wear it buddy.

Your central point is nothing more than "you're right but I discount you're being right" because it's inconvenient and doesn't fit my preconceived notions.". Either that or a Napleonic complex. Either way it led you to side with the loonish and anti-Semitic arthurdecco for years so you wear it buddy.

Oh, we're back to that, are we?

You are an obsessive compulsive. I'm starting to wonder whether you and AD are really just one commenter.

It isn't a temper tantrum. You won't deal with the substance. Ever. Why should Felton get a platform at the VPL and why are those who ask that question obsessive compulsive? You have no answer. Just as you have no answer for your years (yes, years) of coddling an unambigous amti-Semite while saying you liked hinm for being honest. So why don't you equally like Ann Coulter and admire the honesty of her anti-Muslim screeds?

And you're always dictating what the substance should be. Like bringing up someone I've never heard of and an event that occurred in the relatively distant past as comparable to events like Netanyahu at Concordia or IAW or Ann Coulter at U. of Ottawa in an attempt to argue some type of political hypocrisy or inconsistency.

In your mind, they might all be related, but not necessarily in anyone else's. Personally, I take the scale of something into account when judging whether it's a matter of public interest or not, which is all I generally care to discuss with other people.

OK, then as for the substance, I don't understand why a double standard is tolerated. Forget blogs and the personal stuff that you introduced: why should Netanyahu be prevented from speaking at Concordia, Coulter receive a warning about hate speech and organized events opposing IAW be prohibited due to the extra security costs when Felton of all people (and he's not a leftist and wouldn't say that he is) gets air time, IAW proceeds without a Coulter like warning (as far as we know) and the Muhammad cartoons be shunned? This is a legitimate and interesting issue and yet any time I have raised it you have chosen to label it as eveidence of OCD.

OK, then as for the substance, I don't understand why a double standard is tolerated. Forget blogs and the personal stuff that you introduced: why should Netanyahu be prevented from speaking at Concordia, Coulter receive a warning about hate speech and organized events opposing IAW be prohibited due to the extra security costs when Felton of all people (and he's not a leftist and wouldn't say that he is) gets air time, IAW proceeds without a Coulter like warning (as far as we know) and the Muhammad cartoons be shunned?

Don't ask me. I don't consider Netanyahu or Coulter authorities on anything but the politics of propaganda. And I've never participated in IAW, although I support people's right to organise campaigns of divestment, same as I did with South Africa. That the word "apartheid" has been seized, on, all of a sudden, as indicative of hatred or antisemitism just goes to show how weak and desperate the counter-campaign is, despite the resources at its disposal.

Don't ask me. I don't consider Netanyahu or Coulter authorities on anything but the politics of propaganda. And I've never participated in IAW, although I support people's right to organise campaigns of divestment, same as I did with South Africa. That the word "apartheid" has been seized, on, all of a sudden, as indicative of hatred or antisemitism just goes to show how weak and desperate the counter-campaign is, despite the resources at its disposal.

Perhaps. And I resist the notion that anti-Semitism is rampant on the Left. But when the people I've raised show up, either in real life or in an online debate, it's worth pushing back. I'll never understand why that is even a bit controversial or a rationale for an accusation of OCD.

And to make it up to me perhaps you should go online and sponsor me in the Harry's 5K walk for prostate cancer so that I not only beat Jack Layton to the finish line but best him in fundraising as well.

(If you really want sources for Felton's columns I'll post them but that will lead him to come to this discussion, which he may do already given your link to his site. And if he is even a fringe part of the Left, I would rather vote for Harper. But he isn't.)

And to make it up to me perhaps you should go online and sponsor me in the Harry's 5K walk for prostate cancer so that I not only beat Jack Layton to the finish line but best him in fundraising as well.

It never ceases to amaze me the way in which some choose to revise history.

I recall back in the 1980s when I was going to Waterloo University the hub bub around the Merchant of Venice. Cenosors cried that Jewish groups like Canadian Jewish Congress wanted to ban or censor the play from schools. Only those who actually were interested in the facts understood that the Congress simply asked that the play be taught age appropriately. in grade 12 as opposed to grade 9.

Once again Dawg tries to revise history with "Three Wishes". And once again the Jewish community and the CJC are misrepresented. Twenty five years later I am married with children.I read "Three Wishes" when the controversy broke out to see what the argument was about. On the jacket of the book, which I am looking at as I write this, it states very clearly that the book is best taught at a grade 6 level or higher This was the CJC position. It was never to ban.

A simple trip to Google would have helped Dawg from becoming a revisionist with wrong facts.

There was never a call for a complete banning, unlike the present book, or the Corrie play, or the Seven Jewish Children play,or the photography exhibit in Montreal, or the art exhibit in Toronto, or...well, you get the idea.

Anybody would think that Sue and Yariv were trying to deflect. Naw, couldn't be.

But I'm at a loss what I should be apologizing for. I provided a link that set out matter of factly what happened in Toronto in 2006. It was an admittedly limited form of censorship, but censorship it assuredly was.

Bernie Farber was indignant enough about the c-word that he wrote to the papers about it at the time, but more recently (as in the examples above) this attempted cake-having-and-eating has been abandoned.

Dawg: "But I'm at a loss what I should be apologizing for. I provided a link that set out matter of factly what happened in Toronto in 2006. It was an admittedly limited form of censorship, but censorship it assuredly was."

Dawg, with respect, asking that a book be taught age-appropriately is simply not the same as censorship. You see books like "Catcher in the Rye" are taught in senior highschool as opposed to elementary school, would you say then that it is banned or censored for grade 3 students? For a smart guy you are being very silly.

Harry was banned--after a warning--for defaming me as an "anti-Semite." Not to mention for his implicitly racist attitude towards the Palestinians.

No one else in this crowd has been banned, because they know how to behave, while deeply disagreeing with me on occasion. Unlike Harry, they engage, argue in good faith, and avoid trolling.

Sue:

As noted, I did post an explanatory link. But I think many of us are a little tired of being told by professional lobby groups what is "appropriate" reading in the schools. Let the school boards and the curriculum developers decide. Not Bernie Farber, with all due respect.

And what of the more recent bans I mentioned? Why are you skipping over those? Do you defend them? Should B'nai Brith determine everything we are to see and hear?

You seem to forget that we live in a participatory democracy. CJC, Farber even you have the absolute right to put forward an opinion, to lobby and to avocate in any legal manner possible. Frankly I find it pretty distatseful that you would rag on Farber for simply suggesting that a book be taught exactly in the manner that the author and publisher suggested.

As for Bnai Brith, I reject and always have outright calls for censorship of books unless there are severe issues of racism, hatred or xenophobia. I believe their position on The Shepard's grnadughter is wrong

Your attempt to deflect from the ugly reality of East Jerusalem evictions, Harry, told me everything about you that I need to know.

When I raised the fact that a former Speaker of the Knesset and a number of Jews joined with the Palestinians to protest the literal throwing of families onto the street, and that the settlers who took over the houses sang songs, caught on video, celebrating the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, your response was--what?

Dawg, you completely ignored the facts that these "evicted" people were evicted for refusing to pay rent. Unlike their other Arab neighbors in an identical situation who managed to reach a balance with the Jewish owners of these places who could prove legitimate ownership. The "evicted ones" also chose to camp pitifully on the sidewalk all day and then go home to the East Jerusalem apartment that the PA had arranged for them. I don't know what kind of songs the new people might have been singing. Goldstein was a deranged murderer. And the atrocity that he committed was a number of years ago. That you would try to tie that my tail without even confirming it first was inappropriate to say the least.

In the early 1970s, the Israeli courts awarded two Jewish associations ownership of the compound based on land deeds that were a century old. The Palestinian residents were allowed to stay on as protected tenants on the condition that they paid rent to the Jewish groups.

Rejecting the court ruling, many of the Palestinian families refused to pay rent, making them eligible for eviction. Their lawyer claimed that the Jewish land deeds were forged but was not able to convince the Israeli courts.

....The Ghawis came to Jerusalem as refugees from the village of Sarafind, now Tzrifin, in central Israel. But they, like other Palestinians across the 1967 lines, cannot go to court to reclaim lost property because of what some describe as an asymmetry in the Israeli law.

In 1950, to protect the new Jewish state from the claims of the Palestinian refugees, Israel enacted the Absentees’ Property Law. It essentially strips Palestinians of any rights to property left behind in what is now Israel if they were in enemy territory, including East Jerusalem, between November 1947 and May 1948.

With respect to "rent" (protection money would be a better term) imagine that the US annexes Windsor. Old documents show up proving that your home in that city really belongs to Americans. You can only appeal to an unsympathetic US court. You are allowed to stay in your house until the matter is settled, but have to pay "rent" to US authorities.

You refuse--after all, it's your house. The court rules against you, and you are forcibly removed by US marshals from the only home you have ever known. While you sit on the street and worry about your kids, some newly-arrived Russian emigres move into your house.

That's the exact analogy to what's been going on in East Jerusalem. The fact that Harry dishonestly talks about "rent," when it's all about ethnic cleansing, goes right to the implicit racism I was referring to earlier.

And I suppose this phrase was to make sure that your fans understood that the Jews who owned the apt. sang praises of a deranged murderer, and I was in league with them. Sorry, that doesn't sweep under the rug too well.

" the settlers who took over the houses sang songs, caught on video, celebrating the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein.

Also you consistently single out Jews and Israel for this kind of approbation, when variations of it still go on all over the world in the wake of armed conflicts, without comment or comparison.

A fellow I did business with made a trip to Romania to reclaim an ancestral home that was confiscated by the now defunct Communist government.I don't know what songs he was supposed to sing.

As far as Jerusalem is concerned, before 1967 the Jordanians refused access to Jewish holy sites to Jews. And Jews were ethnically cleansed, the old fashioned way (by murder) from other places like Hebron. There was no BDS or anti-"apartheid" movement against the Jordanians, let alone against the "Palestinians" who hadn't yet been named as such.

All of this took place in the atmosphere of an Arab League boycott against Israel on the basis that self-determination for Jews was not OK. Still no BDS movement or "apartheid" type protests by those committed to social justce.

And I'm curious what will cross Obama's mind tonight when at his "universal story" Passover seder he gets to the age old high point of "next year in Jerusalem."